Not your average carpet replacement under the pink dome

A worker pieces together sections of the original-pattern carpeting on the Senate chamber floor﻿.

A worker pieces together sections of the original-pattern carpeting on the Senate chamber floor﻿.

Photo: Senate Media Services

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Rolls of 27-inch-wide replacement carpeting stretch out like fingers on the floor of the Texas Senate chamber, as workers install new floor covering.﻿

Rolls of 27-inch-wide replacement carpeting stretch out like fingers on the floor of the Texas Senate chamber, as workers install new floor covering.﻿

Photo: Senate Media Services

Not your average carpet replacement under the pink dome

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AUSTIN - Texas state senators will stand on brand new green carpet when they reconvene in January, and they have the British to thank for it.

Officials with the State Preservation Board, the agency that manages and maintains the 126-year-old pink-domed statehouse, say they had to go to Dewbury, England, to get a historically accurate floor covering in the Upper Chamber to replace the carpet that had worn out since a 1993 restoration.

"We no longer have the correct narrow-width manufacturing equipment in the USA to reproduce this kind of custom carpet," said Chris Currens, a spokesman for the Preservation Board.

To install the approximately 3,904 linear feet of carpeting - made in rolls 27 inches wide, just like the original version installed in 1917 - workers had to hand-sew the seams together on the Senate floor. That work took eight weeks.

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The cost for that and replacing modern carpets in the gallery, along with some ceiling painting and other preservation work, totaled $508,000, officials said.

Brussels carpet

It was not always that complicated - or expensive.

State historical records show the Senate's first carpet probably arrived in 1889, a year after the pink granite seat of state government was completed, when the state furnished its new showpiece. The cash-strapped state had been unable to do so when the building opened.

Currens said the first Senate carpet was an elaborate five-frame woven Brussels carpet featuring a foliage pattern and bold borders that flanked the center aisle of the cavernous chamber. It wore out and was replaced 12 years later, then again in 1917 with a heavy cut-pile woven carpet that carries the same pattern as today.

Contracts awarded in November 1888 for "floor coverings and draperies" for the entire building totaled $23,000, according to historical archives. Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago likely supplied those items for the iconic four-story edifice.

Replaced many times over the years with a variety of colors and designs, the Senate carpet was returned to its historic green when the Capitol was restored in the early 1990s. With no scraps of the original carpet still in existence, researchers studied enlargements of old photos of the legislative chamber and used a grid system that mapped "the location and color of every tuft of yarn" so the new carpet would be true to the 1917 original, Currens said.

Yarn colors researched

"Since all photographic evidence was in black and white, yarn colors were determined by researching additional historical carpets ... from the same time period, and by researching various trade catalogs and reference publications, together with Capitol-related documents," he said.

Currens said that to replace the carpet, the Senate Chamber was closed to the public on June 1, so it could be cleared of all furniture. Scaffolding was brought in so workers could touch up paint on the ornate ceiling and so the gallery could be re-carpeted.

The chamber reopened in November.

And while the project might seem detailed and expensive to some, officials said the result is historically accurate and should last for as long as the carpet it replaced.

Currens said the carpet installed in the 1993 restoration was expected to last for 12 to 15 years. It lasted 21.